


les filles qui ont dansé avec les mains de feu

by savi0urdr3amer



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright Spoilers, Gen, Hoshido | Birthright Route, Immolation, Suicide, oooh boy it's angsty as fuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-12
Updated: 2016-06-12
Packaged: 2018-07-14 13:53:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7174487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/savi0urdr3amer/pseuds/savi0urdr3amer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>felicia watches as her sister baptizes herself in fire, and nothing seems right with the world anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	les filles qui ont dansé avec les mains de feu

**Author's Note:**

> (i can't believe it's not porn!)
> 
> okay anyways. i knew i wanted to write out my own interpretation of this scene from the moment i first watched it in birthright. i just imagined felicia's self-control and stability crumbling, and having corrin there to witness it, to the point that it makes her sick, makes her guilty- she feels powerless, and felicia feels hopeless. this was such a dark and twisted scene, and i wanted to play with it even more, just to see what i came up with. this was the result and i hate myself for creating this emotional travesty lmao 
> 
> alternatively titled "nothing but dust".

Felicia feels like winter and her skin is porcelain against her dress, black lace spilled over white cream, a fairy dancing in the snow with two left feet. Her eyes glint like the arctic, filled with tears, and she shrieks as Ryoma’s arms wrap around her small, frail body, as if to hug her, as tears begin falling down her white cheeks like specks in a snowglobe. There’s something primal in the way she screams, like something in her has come unhinged, and it so starkly contrasts the goofy laugh, the warm yet distant smile that she flashed at you so often back at the castle; you’d spill your tea and she’d break the teapot after cleaning up the mess you’d made, her fingers quivering out of nervousness, and she’d laugh at herself gently with a hint of a grin tugging at her soft pink lips. But know all you see is the white of her teeth and the horror that paints terror on her face; she’s the muse to a twisted sort of torture, the kind only nightmares can conjure up, and it _hurts_. There are no apologies uttered from her now, no humble whispers of remorse; all that remains of the upbeat maid you recall so fondly is a shell of a broken girl shrieking as her own sister becomes a lamp in a blizzard, a twisted beacon of searing orange light.

It’s like a fucking witch hunt, some kind of twisted lullaby that was sung to you as a child to make you fall asleep. Anyone near you has a constant target on their backs, and every day the body count rises. This is a fucking nightmare, you tell yourself. A fucking delusion.

Looking back, the deaths of your comrades have each shaken you to the core. The halting of their heartbeats was like an earthquake that threatened to break your bones and disjoint you, and every death was just as visceral as the one before it; it became like a prophecy, a twisted curse, that went one by one, two by two, three by three, adding up and up until the numbers tallied too high for a mind like yours to count.

She’s another one, you know. Flora. You laugh bitterly at yourself inside because it’s so fucking paradoxical, so ironic, that someone with a name like hers is facing a death so brutal. Though far more rigid and frosty than Felicia, Flora still invoked pretty blooms in your mind- pale translucent lilies and frothy purple lilacs, roses with just a drop of turquoise at the tip of each petal. She reminded you of holly and dew, of pine needles and the scent of freshly baked bread, and her smile was as warm as her heart. _Gods_ , your stomach turns, twists around itself and you don’t even want to _think_ about warmth right now because it fucking _sickens_ you, makes your skin itch and burn like it’s peeling and peeling and seething and-

Felicia screams again. It’s guttural and agonizing and full of tears and choked syllables, but it successfully destroys the image of your own skin disintegrating into nothing more than a pile of ash. You silently thank her, perhaps even Flora, for this, because you likely would’ve started to rub your skin raw, maybe even digging deep enough to peer into the network of your veins, the little branches that house your draconic blood.

You catch yourself staring at Felicia as she writhes in Ryoma’s grasp; you watch as her fingers claw at his arms, digging crescents and pink and red lines into whatever skin her nails can come in contact with. She squirms like she’s seizing, like she has no bones, desperate to save the only sister she ever had, and the way she bawls makes you feel like you’re broken, like your heart’s been shattered into hundreds of sharp fragments. You don’t blink. (You’re still envisioning glass shattering, a fist becoming bloody as it careens forwards and creates a sea of clear, diamond rain)

Her wispy blonde hair has become disheveled, falling out of her usually tight updo, and this, strangely, strikes you harder than it should’ve. As she struggles it falls past her shoulders, matting to her face from the tears, the snow, and her teeth are gritted into an almost primordial snarl as she caterwauls, begging for Ryoma to let her go, pleading for him to let her help her, _save_ her, even though she knows well that no spell will quell the flames that eat away at her sister. Her arm twists in a grotesque fashion as she tries to work her way around Ryoma’s elbow, reaching for the knife tucked away in the back of her boot, and she half growls, half sobs as Jakob quickly lunges forward and pulls it away from her. He holds it so tightly in his gloved hands you think it may just break the fine leather and cut into his skin.

You briefly picture a disturbing scenario of Felicia retrieving the knife, plunging it into Ryoma’s forearm, and then rushing towards her ice-haired twin, only to have her clumsy feet propel her face-forwards into the snow, laying just inches away from her sister’s molten body as it falls like a forsaken monument. This thought also makes you ill and your eyes swell up with tears, though you’re unable to tell if it’s from the cold or the turmoil that rips through you like a claw diving into flesh.

Only a sliver of that thought becomes true. Ryoma lets her collapse as she bawls question after question, cursing at herself, the profanities spilling from her mouth like bullets and poison, cyanide and arsenic over a blisteringly fresh wound. Her voice shakes and her arms tremble as her hands dig into the snow, her elbows stiffening, each stutter like the sun. It’s the thought of heat again that makes nausea roll over you like a wave and you turn away from her, briefly wondering if you were too weak to face her, and your leering gaze at the frigid white hell growing beneath you has your head running in circles around itself. What a cruel fate. Who’s destined for a torture like that?

Not her, you think, you _know_. Flowers do not deserve to burn.

When you turn around again Kaze and Orochi are at either side of her, hoisting her arms over their shoulders, and she looks like a scarecrow with broken limbs, a gnarled child’s toy. Her eyes flicker up towards you for no more than a blink, and the glassy look in them has you reeling. That’s when you really do turn around and vomit, her dense expression boring into you, piercing into your skull, as nothing short of stinging disgust surges through your body. It’s like the sickness Felicia saved you from so many years ago, only this time it won’t let go of you, and it won’t stop aching.

Your optimism is the first thing that comes back to you when your head hovers in the sky just a little less, but it irritates you far more than it encourages you. Yes, you want to tell her that it will be okay, that it’s time to go home, but her eyes tell you everything but that, and you _believe_ them because you know they will whisper to you at night, haunt you like a ghost, the ghost of her pretty twin sister with flowers blooming out of her empty eye sockets, ribcage cracked like desert sand, lips made of the words she never got to say, the memoirs she never wrote. In that moment it is your own fist that pierces through the glass in your mind and every nerve in you shrieks in pain like Flora did.

Felicia’s words are branded into your brain. I have no home now. The sky is grey. We are all dead.


End file.
